“You speak Italian.”
“Yes,” he answered with candid terseness.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“You never asked me, Signor Master.”
And so it was that I discovered that Simonis was not in Vienna in search of some little job to make ends meet, but for a far nobler reason: he was a student. Of medicine, to be precise. Simonis Rimanopoulos (this was his surname) had begun his studies at the University of Bologna, which explained his knowledge of Italian, but then the famine of the year 1709 and the prospect of a less impoverished life had sent him – reasonably enough – to the opulent city of Vienna and its ancient university, the Alma Mater Rudolphina, on which students from Hungary, Poland, eastern Germany and many other countries converged.
Simonis belonged to the well-known category of Bettelstudenten – poor students, those without family support, who maintained themselves by all sorts of expedients, including, if necessary, mendicancy.
It had been a stroke of luck for Simonis that I had hired him: in Vienna the Bettelstudenten were not looked on with favour. Despite the frequent edicts published, vagabond students were often to be seen – together with others who joined them, but who were not really students – begging in the streets and in front of the churches and houses night and day, even during lesson times. Under cover of studying, they loafed about, pilfering and thieving. Everyone remembered the tumult that had broken out between 17th and 18th January 1706 both within and without the city, and also at Nussdorf; strict (though fruitless) investigations into this affair were still being carried out so that the culprits might be punished harshly. These students tarnished the good name of the other students and His Caesarean Majesty had issued numerous resolutions, with the aim of uprooting once and for all this lamentable practice of betteln, or begging – which was the word for lounging about and succumbing to vice under the pretext of study. After the tumults of five years earlier, the rector, the Caesarean superintendents and the assembly of the ancient University of Vienna had been commanded to issue a special edict giving a final warning to the Bettelstudenten who were roaming around and not studying: within fourteen days they had to leave the Caesarean capital. If they failed to do so they would be seized by the guards and taken ad Carceres Academicos, to the university prisons, where suitable punishment would be meted out. Those impoverished students, on the other hand, who daily and continuously applied themselves to their studies, had to seek a study grant in the Alumnates or some other means of sustenance; only those who were unable, because of the numbers, to obtain such assistance, or those who were following a particularly demanding course of study and for the moment had no other choice than to seek alms outside lesson times, would be allowed to continue in this fashion – but only for their bare necessities and until the arrival of new orders. In addition they must always carry with them the badge identifying them as true Bettelstudenten, which they must get renewed every month by the university and wear on their chests while begging. Otherwise they would not be recognised as genuine poor students but as vagabond students, and so be immediately incarcerated.
This explains why Simonis had offered himself as an assistant chimney-sweep: the risk of having to beg for alms to survive, and consequently ending up in prison, was always lurking.
But how that mild and simple spirit had managed to learn my own language so well and, above all, how the devil he managed to study (and at the university, no less) – these matters remained a mystery.
“Signor Master, do you want me to drive the cart, as I know the way?”
I had, indeed, only the vaguest idea where the Caesarean property lay: in the plain of Simmering, a flat area of grassland south-east of Vienna near the village of Ebersdorf. The exact name, as it appeared in the deed of appointment, was nothing if not exotic: “the Place with No Name known as Neugebäu”, or the New Building. I had tried to question my workmates, but I had received only vague answers, partly of course because my imperial appointment had not made me popular. No one had been able to give me a clear idea of the building I was about to inspect. “I’ve never been there,” said one, “but I think it’s a kind of villa”. “Even though I’ve never seen it, I know it’s a garden,” said another. “It’s a hunting lodge,” swore another, while the next one defined it “a bird enclosure.” One thing was certain: none of my fellow chimney-sweeps had ever visited the place, nor did they appear to have any wish to set foot there.
It was a long way to the Place with No Name. And so I was perfectly happy to leave the mule’s reins in Simonis’s hands. My little boy had asked, and had been allowed, to sit on the box seat, alongside the Greek, who every so often let him hold the reins to teach him how to drive the cart. I settled myself behind them, among the tools.
My son gradually dozed off and I secured him to the cart with a rope, so that he would not fall off. Simonis drove with a firm and methodical hand. Strangely, he kept silent. He seemed absorbed.
In the open country, as we headed towards the plain of Simmering, there was no noise but the rattling of the cartwheels and the clatter of the mule’s hooves.
All things considered, I reflected with a smile as I gazed absently at the monotonous panorama and yielded to the drowsiness of the middle of the day, on board the cart were three children: my little son; myself, a child in stature; and Simonis, who had remained an infant in mental capacity.
“We’re here, Signor Master.”
I woke up numb and aching where the tools had pressed into me while I dozed. We were in a large abandoned courtyard. While Simonis and the little boy got down and began to unload the tools, I looked around. We had entered via a large gateway; looking back I could make out the road we must have travelled along through the open country.
“We’re inside the Place with No Name,” stated the Greek, observing my still glazed eyes. “Through that arch is the entrance to the main building.”
In front of us an archway led to a low outbuilding and gave onto another open area beyond. To our right, a little door in the wall revealed a spiral staircase. Looking upwards to the left I could see castellated walls and, to my surprise, a hexagonal tower whose roof was adorned with curious pinnacles. Everything – the tower, the gateway, the arch, the merlons – was in bright white stone such as I had never seen, and which dazzled my eyes, still heavy with sleep.
“This leads down to the cellars,” announced my little apprentice.
He had been running around exploring things and had stopped in front of a blanched semicircular keep of unexpected shape, actually a kind of apse, from which there extended a long construction that could be glimpsed through the arch and which was apparently the main building.
“Good,” I answered, since one always starts cleaning the flues from the cellars.
I got down from the cart and, like Simonis, armed myself with tools. Then we joined my son.
We crossed the threshold of what did in fact appear to be the entrance to a cellar and then descended a staircase. The ceiling was low, with a barrel vault, and the walls were imposing. A door at the bottom led into a great space that was completely empty: rather than abandoned, it looked incomplete, as if they had never finished building it.
While my two assistants groped the walls looking for the opening of a flue, I went ahead. Dazzled by the light outside, my pupils had not yet adjusted to the growing darkness and suddenly I found my nose pressed up against something cold, heavy and greasy. Instinctively I rubbed my nose and looked at my fingertips: they were red. Then I screwed up my eyes and peered.
It was dangling from a rope that hung from the ceiling and was swaying gently from where I had knocked it. It was the trunk of a bleeding corpse, naked, legless, headless and armless, and blackish blood was trickling from it onto the floor. It was attached to the rope by a great rusty piece of iron that pierced the body right through. It must have been flayed alive, I thought in a flash of lucid horror, since those parts that were not dripping blood were bright red, revealing nerves a
nd bands of whitish fat.
Appalled by what I had seen, while my chimney-sweep’s tools fell to the floor in a jangling clatter, with all the breath I had in my body I yelled to Simonis to run for it, bearing my son to safety without waiting for me – and then I fled myself.
I saw Simonis obeying me with the speed of lightning. Without any idea why, he lifted the little boy onto his shoulders and pelted away on his long legs. I hoped I would make it as well, even though my own legs were far from long. My hopes proved vain. I emerged into the sunlight and saw Simonis already disappearing over the horizon, lashing wildly at the mule – and then I heard it.
It was not very different from the way I had imagined it a thousand times: a tremendous bellowing, which makes men and beasts and all things tremble.
I had no time to realise what direction it came from: a powerful paw sweep knocked me sideways. I tumbled to the ground, fortunately well away, and as I rolled I heard the roar again. It was then that I saw it approaching: Prince of Terror, Mauler of Flesh; even as I recognised the demoniacal eyes, the lurid mane, the bloody canines, I was running for my life, stumbling at every pace, moaning with terror and unable to believe my eyes. In that lonely place outside Vienna, on that frosty crisp day of early spring, in the cold north above the Alps, I was being chased by a lion.
I dashed into the little doorway immediately to my left, and with the speed of lightning I pelted down the spiral staircase. I found myself in a little open area. I heard the beast faltering for just a second or two and then come roaring after me, and I made my way into a large roofless building in search of some means of escape.
I thought I was in the middle of an incomprehensible nightmare when I suddenly found myself in front of . . . a sailing ship.
It was smaller than usual but unmistakeable. And that was not all: it was in the shape of a bird of prey, complete with head and beak, wings and tail fins, with a flag attached to these latter.
Certain now that I must be the victim of some envious demon and his lethal conjuring tricks, I leaped onto the feathery tail of that absurd vessel, with the desperate idea of yanking the flagpole from its place and using it as a weapon to ward off the lion, whose roar continued to set my flesh and all around me trembling.
Unfortunately, despite my chimney-sweep’s agility and slim build, my age told against me. The animal was faster: in a few bounds it had reached me and launched itself with a final pounce onto its prey.
But it failed. It had not managed to leap high enough to catch me. Yielding perhaps to the lion’s assaults, the feathered ship began to sway and its oscillations grew wider and wider. The lion tried again with a higher leap. It was no use. The more the lion leaped, the smaller it seemed to become. While I clung with all my strength to the wooden feathers, the ship was now pitching and rolling dizzily, and its bizarre sail – a kind of dome that formed the back of the bird – twisted and swelled with cavernous gulps of air.
The world was whirling frantically around me and my terror-distorted senses told me that the absurd carved bird was taking flight.
It was then that I heard someone declaim threateningly in the Teutonic idiom:
“Bad Mustafa! Straight to bed with no supper!”
His name was Frosch, he stank of wine and the lion crouched tranquilly at his feet.
He explained that the animal loved the company of men and so, whenever anyone turned up round those parts, it had the bad habit of greeting them with roars of joy and playful leaps in its desire to lick them.
The Place with No Name, known as Neugebäu, was not just any place, he clarified. It had been built about a century and a half ago, by His Caesarean Majesty of honoured memory Emperor Maximilian II, and the only thing it retained today of its former splendour was the imperial menagerie, which was rich in exotic animals, especially wild beasts. As he spoke, he stroked the enormous lion, now fortunately listless and decrepit, which just a few moments before had seemed to me an invincible brute.
“Bad Mustafa, you’ve been bad!” Frosch kept scolding it, while the lion docilely let him put a chain round its neck and gazed sidelong at me. “I’m sorry that he scared you so,” he finally apologised.
Frosch was the keeper of the menagerie of the Place with No Name. He looked after the lions, but also other animals. While he introduced himself, my legs were still trembling like reeds. Frosch offered me a sip from his flask, which he swigged from frequently. I refused: if I thought back to the bleeding corpse I might well throw up.
Frosch guessed my thoughts and reassured me: it was just a piece of mutton, put there to attract the lion, as it had just run away from him and could have gone anywhere.
Unfortunately, these explanations were offered to me in the only language the keeper knew, that guttural German, cavernous and corrupt, spoken by the humblest inhabitants of Vienna. I am reporting our dialogue as if it had been a normal conversation, instead of a confused babel, with me asking him to repeat every other sentence, provoking a series of impatient snorts from Frosch and, as he drew from his flask of schnaps (the robust liquor with which he kept up his spirits), the occasional vexed burp.
“Italian. Chimney-sweep,” I introduced myself in my primitive German, “I . . . clean chimneys castle.”
Frosch was pleased to hear why I was there. It was time some emperor took care of Neugebäu again. Now only he and the animals lived there, he concluded, waving his hand at Mustafa, who was polishing off the remains of the mutton with great gusto.
Every so often the keeper would frown at the lion, and Mustafa (the name was chosen out of contempt for the Infidel Turks) would appear to shrink, in humble contrition. The gruff keeper seemed to exercise an invincible influence over the beast. He assured me that I ran no risk now: while Frosch was present, all the animals obeyed blindly. Certainly there were some rare exceptions, he admitted in a low tone, since the lion had escaped from his control and had been wandering around freely until just a while ago.
So I was not in a terrible nightmare, I thought with a sigh of relief, while I prepared to clamber down from my mount. I had another look at it, sure that my eyes would now show me something less absurd than the sailing ship in the form of a bird of prey that I had thought I had beheld in those moments of terror.
But no. What I now saw was a mysterious object, and I would not have known whether to describe it as a monster, a machine or a ghost.
It was a cross between a ship and a wagon, between a bird of prey and a cetacean. It had the solid form of a barrow, the capacious hull of a barge, and the unblemished sail of a naval vessel. At the prow, there was the proud head of a gryphon, with a hooked, rapacious beak; at the stern, the caudal fins of a great kite; at the sides the powerful pinions of an eagle. It was as long as two carriages, and as broad as a felucca. Its wood was old and worn, but not rotten. On board, in the middle of a broad space shaped like a bathtub, there was room for three or four people, in addition to the helmsman. At the prow and stern were two rudimentary wooden globes, half corroded by time, one representing the celestial spheres and the other the earth, as if to suggest the route to the pilot. The whole ship (if it really could be defined such) was covered by a great sail, the frame of which gave it a semi-spherical shape. At the stern was the flag, which I had vainly endeavoured to pull out; it bore a coat of arms, surmounted by a cross.
“It’s the flag of the Kingdom of Portugal,” Frosch clarified.
There was only one thing that I had dreamt: the ship was not hovering in the air but rested solidly on the ground.
I asked him in wonder what on earth this bizarre vehicle was and how it had got there.
By way of answer, as if fearing that the explanation would prove too long, or implausible, he rummaged in a corner of the room and thrust a heap of papers under my nose. It was an old gazette.
Even in the most difficult languages, reading is less arduous than conversing. So I sat down on the ground and managed to decipher the pamphlet, which bore a date of about two years earlier:
New edition for the Fair of Naumburg subsequent to the exemplar already printed.
Year 1709
Vienna, 24th June 1709
Yesterday around 9 of the clock the whole city was in great alarm and agitation. Every road was full of people, those who were not in the streets were at the windows, and were asking what was amiss. Hardly anyone, however, could give an account of what had occurred, people ran hither and thither, shouting and crying: the Day of Judgement is upon us. Others believed it to be an earthquake, while yet others swore that an entire army of Turks was at the gates of the city. Finally in the sky there appeared a great number of birds, both large and small, which, as it first appeared, were flying around another very large bird, and were quarrelling with it. This tumult began to descend earthwards, and everyone now saw that the cause of this chaos, which had been taken for a bird, was in fact a machine in the form of a ship, with a sail, which was stretched out above it and which swayed in the wind, and on board of which was a man in the habit of a monk, who with several pistol shots announced his arrival.
After circulating in the sky, this Cavalier of the air revealed that his intention was to set himself down on the ground in an open space in this city, but there suddenly arose a wind, which not only impeded his project, but drove him towards the summit of the bell tower of St Stephen’s Cathedral, and caused the sail to entangle itself around said tower, so that the ship became immobilised there. This event aroused a fresh clamour among the townspeople, who ran towards the square of the bell tower, so that at least twenty people were trampled in the affray.
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the man suspended in the air, but that was certainly of no assistance to him, since he was asking for help, and to that end it was hands that were needed. After observing what was happening in the city for a couple of hours, since no one could assist him, he became impatient, picked up the hammer and other tools that he had with him on the ship and set to work hammering and striking, until the top of the Bell Tower which had blocked him became detached and fell. Thus he took flight again and, after swaying to and fro for a while, with great dexterity brought his Flying Ship to earth not far from the Imperial Palace. At once a company of soldiers from the garrison of this city was sent there to take the new arrival under their protection, for otherwise the curious townsfolk would have trampled him underfoot.
Veritas (Atto Melani) Page 6